Hara Museum

Time Present - Photography from the Deutsche Bank Collection

12 Sep 2015 - 11 Jan 2016

Cao Fei
My Future is Not a Dream No. 2, 2006
120 x 150 cm C-print
© Cao Fei / Deutsche Bank Collection
TIME PRESENT - PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE DEUTSCHE BANK COLLECTION
12 September 2015 - 11 January 2016

This exhibition presents a panorama of photographic art made between 1970 and 2010 from the Deutsche Bank Collection, which ranks as one of the most important collections of contemporary art on paper in the world and boasts some 60,000 works. By showcasing a rich diversity of photographic art in which snippets of "time" are captured and recorded, this exhibition hopes to shine a light on the power of the photograph as a medium of artistic expression.

The title "Time Present" is taken from a poem by T.S. Eliot. Influenced by the philosopher Henri Bergson's idea of "pure duration," Eliot's concept of time was a unique one that made little distinction between past, present and future. This interest in time was not limited only to Eliot and Bergson; consideration of time has occurred in many forms over the ages within the areas of art and philosophy and even today it is studied as a group or shared culture within cultural anthropology and folklore. Technically speaking, the photograph (both analog and digital) captures a snippet of time and stores it as an image, allowing us to recall the moment at which the shutter was released. The absolute gap between the time of the shot (the "past") and the viewing of the photograph (the "now") is an aspect that artists have used to construct various images of "time" in their works.

Against a backdrop of cultural and social diversification, one of the highlights of this show is the extent to which photography has been pursued within contemporary art as a common language. The show features some 40 artists (and a total of approx. 60 works) who are active within their respective cultural and social milieus. They include such internationally known German artists as Bernd & Hilla Becher, Andreas Gursky and Gerhard Richter; emerging Asian artists such as Cao Fei, Yeondoo Jung and Liu Zhen; Japanese artists such as Hiroshi Sugimoto, Tokihiro Sato and Miwa Yanagi; and others from Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Through their works, the show hopes to cast a spotlight on contemporary photographic expression as it exists within the ever accelerating wave of globalization.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable.
“Burnt Norton” from “The Four Quartets” (1935) by T. S. Eliot
 

Tags: Andreas Gursky, Yeondoo Jung, Gerhard Richter, Tokihiro Sato, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Miwa Yanagi